Nova Drill Press

[Casey Carr]

I know a few of you wound up purchasing a new Nova drill press over the holiday weekend. I did the same and have been working on getting it set up. And I managed to get the head on myself with the help of my seven and nine year old kids! Without anyone getting hurt no less!

Was checking the run out on my chuck and I was more than a little disappointed. .025" was about as good as I could get it. I had the same issue with my old drill press, so what am I doing wrong? Put a pin gauge in the chuck with a magnetic base holding a dial indicator about an inch below where the chuck grabs the pin gauge and rotated the chuck by hand. Whacked it pretty good a few times with a mallet until I wound up breaking my dial indicator with the shock. Guess that's what I get for being impatient. Are stock chucks just that poorly made? Do I need to upgrade the chuck? It's got to be something I'm not doing right, but I don't know what.

[Mark Carlson]

I'd remove the chuck and measure the runout on the spindle. If the spindle runout is much less you know its your chuck or maybe your pin gauge. I'd also reseat the chuck and measure again.

[Bill Dufour]

Check the internal taper as suggested above. If need be bend the spindle with a pipe clamp. Then check the taper arbor for runout, Then install the chuck and check that.
Bill D.

A cheap harbor freight indicator is plenty good enough for this. All you need is a needle that moves, accuracy is not an issue just try to reduce the needle motion to as little as possible. Easier with a needle rather
then digital.

[Jerry Bruette]

What were you whacking with a mallet? Sounds like a good way to ruin a brand new, expensive drill press.

I would pull the chuck and clean the tapers--internal on spindle, external on chuck. Then clean the jaws in the chuck, and the internal mechanism could be full of who knows what and throwing it off.

Reseat the chuck into the taper. Don't whack it, raise the table so you can use the handle to bump the chuck against a piece of scrap wood that's laying on the table.

If that doesn't solve your runout maybe a call to Nova for help before you try bending or whacking anything into submission.

[Bruce Page]

First, never hit a chuck or spindle laterally, you can damage the machine’s spindle bearings and easily trash the chuck, (you may have shortened their life already). Check the spindle bore itself for runout. If it is out more than a thou or two, return it. Never use pipe clamps or any other force on it.
I suspect your issue is the chuck. Asian drill chuck quality is hit or miss. A quality Albrecht or a Jacobs Super Ball Bearing drill chuck will run in the hundreds of dollars.

I agree with Jerry with the exception of seating the chuck. Retract the chuck jaws completely, insert the male taper into the female taper and with authority raise the chuck into the quill (be careful not to pinch yourself). Next, hold a scrap piece of wood against the chuck face and with light to moderate force, tap the wood up 3-4 times with a mallet.

[Derek Cohen]

I posted on this a few days ago. Rather than link, I‘ll paste in a slightly expanded version to maintain the thread ...

I replaced the Nova Voyager chuck (which is actually a cheapish Chinese-made keyed chuck), with a 13mm keyless Albrecht clone I have used for several years. I had good results with this in my previous drill press, and was wondering whether to upgrade it or not (keeping in mind that a new Albrecht chuck is $500-$900). Consequently, I completed some run out tests for it.


I must comment ahead that this test is rather rudimentary. It does not assess the Nova's accuracy, which I decided is more than likely to be of the highest order since it is direct drive and claimed to be vibration-free (it certainly feels so). It does not assess the Albrecht clone directly either. What it does is assess the entire enchilada - if that shows an issue, then I will backtrack.
Set up ...





I used a polished 1/4" shank carbide router bit as the test piece. This is as smooth and hopefully as round a rod as I have in the shop. This was a one-time test, so I may have had better results from another router bit, or from re-positioning it. It is what it is ...




Results ...




This reads 0.045mm run out. That is 0.0017" run out.

My understanding is: there is run out that may occur with the spindle, then there is run out that will occur at the chuck and quill (which could also be measured separately), and finally there is the run out measured at the bit. The results here are a total of all these together. Plus there is the question of how much the side pressure may be adding to the error reading (it can only make it worse).

It was mentioned to me that around 5 thousands of an inch would be acceptable. I have 1 thousand inch. Apparently Albrecht guarantees their chucks to have .0015" run out or less. I think I am okay


Regards from Perth


Derek

[Brian Tymchak]

What were you whacking with a mallet? Sounds like a good way to ruin a brand new, expensive drill press.

The asembly instructions call for using a soft mallet to seat the arbor into the chuck and then again to seat that into the spindle.

[Casey Carr]

Ok, I’ll try taking everything apart and cleaning it again, see if I can’t get this thing to seat better. I’ll need a different dial indicator to measure the internal taper on the head, but I need a new one anyways...the one thing I didn’t think to clean off was the jaws themselves. And I’ll start looking at a new chuck as well. Hadn’t heard of the Jacobs super ball bearing.

[Robert Hayward]

I was not happy with the factory chuck on my Voyager. Not because of run out, that was within spec. I wanted a chuck that would take a smaller bit. I ended up buying this chuck and got a better run out reading also.https://www.ajaxtoolsupply.com/ro15ca3jtmok.html

[Casey Carr]

Took it all apart tonight and cleaned everything, top to bottom. Got less than two ten thousandths on the internal taper, so at least the machine is true. Used the lever that pushes the chuck down to seat the first taper, measured that and it was less than three ten thousandths. So far so good! Put the chuck on in the same fashion and viola! 3.5 thousandths. I think I can live with that! Makes me feel so much better!